Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference at the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, Israel, April 30, 2018.. (photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)
Israelâs Mossad intelligence service broke into the anonymous Tehran building that housed Iranâs secret nuclear files and smuggled half a ton of documents and compact discs back to Israel the same night.
The New York Times in an article posted on its website Monday night quoted a senior Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity as saying that the Mossad discovered the warehouse in February 2016 and kept the building under surveillance since then.
Mossad operatives broke into the building in January, took the original documents, and returned to Israel the same night, the official told the Times.
 In his nationally televised broadcast, first in English, on Monday night, Israelâs Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the hiding place of the documents. âThis is where they kept the atomic archives. Right here. Few Iranians knew where it was, very few, and also a few Israelis,â Netanyahu said. âNow, from the outside, this was an innocent-looking compound. It looks like a dilapidated warehouse. But from the inside, it contained Iranâs secret atomic archives locked in massive files,â he said.
On stage with Netanyahu were shelves of binders and a moveable wall of CDs.
âAnd hereâs what we got. Fifty-five thousand pages. Another 55,000 files on 183 CDs. Everything youâre about to see, is an exact copy of the original Iranian material,â he said, adding: âYou may want to know where are the originals? Well, I can say theyâre now in a very safe place.â
The unnamed official told the newspaper that Trump was told of the operation to retrieve the documents by Mossad Director Yossi Cohen, when he visited Washington in January.
The material was not unveiled until now because the documents had to be analyzed, and translated from Persian, the official said.
Netanyahu said during his presentation that the information had been shared with the United States and that âthe United States can vouch for its authenticity.â
President Donald Trump is set to decide by the middle of next month whether it will remain in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the deal is known.
In a meeting with reporters in the White House Rose Garden shortly after Netanyahuâs presentation, Trump said that the disclosure âshowed that I was 100% rightâ in criticizing the Iran nuclear deal. âThat is just not an acceptable situation,â he also said.
Trump declined to say what he would decide on the Iran nuclear deal. âWeâll see what happens. Iâm not telling you what Iâm doing, but a lot of people think they know. On or before the 12th, weâll make a decision. That doesnât mean we wonât negotiate a real agreement,â he said.
âThe United States is aware of the information just released by Israel and continues to examine it carefully,â the US Press Secretary said in a statement following the presentation.
Source: Jerusalem Post
